Rudy (17 page)

That unwavering support meant everything. Especially as the end of the second semester inched closer and I started filling out my final application to Notre Dame, knowing it was my last chance; knowing that everything was on the line; knowing that this was the only application that really mattered; knowing that finally I would get the full recommendation of Brother John Driscoll and that my name recognition among the Notre Dame administration would likely help. I knew all of that but simply did not know with any certainty whatsoever if my combination of grades, determination, and grit was enough to overcome the incredible odds that were stacked against me in every way.

I graduated Holy Cross that May with honors.
Cum laude
, they called it. I walked away with my Associate's Degree and had no idea what an Associate's Degree was good for. I never thought about it. The degree wasn't my goal. I didn't even feel like celebrating. Here I was, the first kid in the Ruettiger family to hold any kind of a degree whatsoever, and it didn't feel like an accomplishment. Not yet, anyway. The accomplishment was still to come. I found myself walking around with a knot in my stomach, wondering when I'd hear from Notre Dame.

I made a stop at the Grotto, lit a few candles, and prayed on my knees in that beautiful spot one last time before moving out of St. Joe's and back to my parents' house. It was strange to be home in Joliet without the absolute assurance that I would be headed back to Notre Dame in the fall. I held on to the powerful feeling that I
would
be headed back, of course, but that confidence and determination is never quite the same as true knowledge. I worried. In fact, I let myself fill up with worry. Let me tell you, that is not a good feeling.

The short walk down our driveway to the mailbox each day was brutal. Opening it up, peering inside, pulling out and sifting through the bills and letters and cards and various bits of junk mail only to come up empty-handed felt like a punch in the stomach every time. Until finally, one afternoon, I think it was late June, I pulled that handle, flipped through the bills, and recognized the Notre Dame insignia in the upper left-hand corner of one envelope. I noticed something different about this one too: it felt a little bit thicker. My heart started racing. Was I imagining the thickness? It wasn't that much thicker, was it? Was I seeing things?

I didn't open it. I hurried back inside and dropped the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter. I ducked into the downstairs bathroom, which was just about the only place to find any privacy in that house. I put the lid down and sat on the toilet seat. I took a few deep breaths, slid my finger through the little open slot at the back of the envelope, and carefully broke the seal. I didn't want to rip it. I didn't want to rush. The knot in my stomach felt like a giant ball of gnarled-up twine as I pulled the folded pieces of paper out and set the envelope on the sink.

I closed my eyes. This was it.

I unfolded the letter, keeping the written side facing the floor. My heart pounded like I'd been working the punching bag at the ACC. I took one more deep breath and turned the letter right side up. My eyes scanned the opening lines with the efficiency I now applied to my studies, using techniques I had learned from my friend Freddy—to scan for the important words, the meaningful words, the words that held the key to my entire future.

“Dear Mr. Ruettiger . . . Your application for transfer to the University of Notre Dame has been . . .
approved
. . .”

I could feel my face tightening. My eyes welled up.

“ . . . pleased to inform you . . . accepted for enrollment as a junior in the fall semester . . .”

I couldn't read another word. With my elbows on my knees, I dropped my head forward into the palms of my hands, pressing the letter to my forehead and bawling like a baby. I tried to hold it in. I didn't want anyone to hear me. I was embarrassed to cry! But the knot in my stomach unraveled almost instantly, and the floodgate of everything I'd been striving for, everything I'd dreamed about, everything everyone told me I could never do opened itself up wide, and the emotion flowed out of me like a great lake bursting through a mighty dam.

I'm not sure how long I stayed in that bathroom. I lost all track of time and space. When I regained my ability to breathe without tears, I reread the letter, from top to bottom, just to make sure it was real. I looked at the envelope, at the Notre Dame insignia, just to make sure it matched up with the letterhead. Just to be sure it was true. I had waited so long and worked so hard, it felt like a dream. Heck, it
was
a dream! An impossible dream that I'd made come true.

I set the letter down and splashed some water on my face, drying it off with one of my mom's neatly folded hand towels before finally finding the strength to open that door and walk upstairs into the kitchen without bawling my eyes out in front of everyone.

My mom was zipping around, getting ready to start dinner. It took me a minute to get her to slow down long enough to realize I had something important to tell her. She finally looked at my face, and I'm pretty sure she could tell I had been crying. Moms tend to notice that kind of stuff. “What is it, Danny?” she said.

“Read this,” I said, and I handed her the letter. She read it, slowly, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe what she was reading. Then she looked at me and gave me the biggest smile.

“Did you tell your dad yet?” she asked me.

“No, Mom, not yet,” I said.

“Well, he'll be home from work soon. He'll be very proud of you.” It's funny how she always used my dad as the reference point, as if he were the most pivotal figure in our family, as if his opinion mattered most. My dad always did the same thing with her. He was her hero, and she was his hero. I remember thinking, even then in my midtwenties, that wasn't a bad thing to be to each other in a relationship.

My dad walked through the door maybe half an hour later with his usual worn-out, end-of-the-day look on his face. The house was buzzing with all the kids as he set his lunch bucket down. “Dad,” I said, “I've got some news.”

He stopped and looked at me. Like mom, I think he sensed that something big was going on. I handed him the letter and slowly watched the shock and awe come over his face as he read those precious words.

“Danny Boy got in,” he said to himself. And then, with a massive smile: “Hey kids, Danny Boy got into Notre Dame!”

My brothers and sisters flipped out, squealing with delight, echoing his words—“Danny Boy got in!”—in their high-pitched voices, patting me on the back and giving me hugs.

“Well come eat, everyone. Come eat!” my mom said, and we all sat down for one of the happiest dinners any of us could recall. My dad seemed totally energized through that whole meal, and I'm pretty sure I know why. My acceptance wasn't just a new point of pride for him; it also lifted a monkey off his back: the crap he got from all of his co-workers at Union Oil.

It felt good to put an end to that misery for him. Of course, I added a whole new monkey for him to carry around about two seconds later, when I told him that getting into Notre Dame wasn't my biggest accomplishment. There was still one more thing I was planning to do. “I'm planning to play football for the Fighting Irish,” I told him. My little brothers all thought that was the coolest thing in the world, but I could see in my dad's eyes that he just didn't think it was possible. The only Notre Dame players he had ever seen were the giants on the field. He had never been in the locker room. He had never seen the third- and fourth-string guys who helped make that team complete. He had no idea that anyone who looked like me could even dream about being a part of that tradition. I knew I wouldn't convince him of it either. I'd just have to show him.

The next morning, I called Freddy. He had been such a big influence on me. Without his help, without his academic coaching, I never would have had the grades to get that letter. I wanted him to see it. I wanted him to read it, in person. I asked if he'd meet me at St. Joe's and told him I had something I wanted him to see. He agreed.

I met him there on campus the next day, and of course he was real anxious to know what was going on, but I made him wait just a little bit longer. “Come with me,” I said, and I started down the path behind St. Joe's, off to the left, along the perimeter of St. Joseph's Lake. Thick trees immediately behind St. Joe's obscure the view of the lake at ground level, but as we approached the clearing in front of Moreau Seminary, the lake came into full view. There weren't any benches in that spot, but that spot felt right to me. So we sat in the grass there, looking across that water with a crystal-clear view of the Golden Dome and its perfect reflection in the lake's smooth surface. It was in that spot that I finally reached into my pocket and pulled out my acceptance letter.

Freddy read it, and smiled, and nodded. “I knew you could do it,” he said.

“I couldn't have done it without you.”

“Congrats, man!”

That's about as mushy as we got. But that spot by the lake, and that moment with Freddy, etched themselves into my memory forever. He would be moving on soon; he was headed to Florida to go to law school, following his dream the same way I had followed mine toward Notre Dame. I loved the fact that we were both accomplishing exactly what we had set out to do. It just felt good to be around someone else who understood that feeling, who wanted that feeling, and who was willing to help someone else accomplish their goal rather than tear them down or try to keep them in their place.

I felt as if I were surrounded by those kind of people, now, almost all the time. And man, it sure felt good.

Back in Joliet, of course, the feeling was a little different. There were still a lot of doubters. I tried not to let it bother me. I had proven them wrong once, and I was about to prove them wrong again. I told everyone that I got into Notre Dame. In some ways, I think I lifted a lot of spirits among my old high school friends, and even some of those co-workers from back at the power plant. It's hard not to feel good on some level when you see someone succeed. But there's also a lot of jealousy, self-doubt, and all kinds of other stuff that come into play. I realized that I didn't like being around those sorts of attitudes anymore, so I tried to avoid them whenever I could. Of course, during a lot of these conversations—maybe too many—I immediately brought up the fact that I was planning to go out for the Notre Dame football team. Boy, did that give the old Joliet doubters a whole new set of ammunition! “Keep dreamin', Rudy.”

Tell you what; if you interpret that phrase in a way that's not sarcastic, it's a pretty good mantra!
I will keep dreamin'. Thanks!

Word got around town pretty quickly, and unfortunately that only amplified the chatter at work for my dad. “You think your kid's gonna play for Notre Dame, Ruettiger? Yeah, right.”

I shut up about my football dream after that. I realized it was better to just keep it to myself, except around very select individuals. Even so, I took those words and used them to help fire me up:
Yeah, right. Just watch me
.

8
Walking On

I lived in a closet my first few days at Notre Dame.

I was so determined to get back on campus and to be there for the start of summer football training that I moved back in early July. The campus wasn't open to incoming students yet, and I didn't have a dormitory to go to. Now that I was out of Holy Cross, the special deal they gave me to stay at St. Joe's wasn't available to me anymore. I certainly didn't have the money to pay for full room and board at Notre Dame, and I didn't have the money to rent an apartment in South Bend either. It's funny, though, that once again, when I was taking that leap of faith, moving forward toward my dream, a path just seemed to appear before me.

Who would ever think that being chatty with a janitor would lead to finding a housing solution? Yet that's exactly what happened. I met a janitor named Rudy—another Rudy! I couldn't believe it!—a remarkably friendly older black gentleman, through my work with the summer hockey camp, and he was more than happy to let me crash on a cot in a maintenance closet that July. It was just a place to lay my head at night, and that was all I needed.

Of course, I didn't realize that I couldn't walk onto the football team at the start of the summer season. I showed up at the field one morning and found out pretty quickly that only Notre Dame students who were already a part of the team the previous year, or who had been recruited for the new season, were allowed on the field. I would have to wait until August, when the walk-on tryouts were announced, before I'd have a shot.

I couldn't even watch the practices. They blocked out all the fences so no one from a competing team could spy and see what they were doing, and that meant no one—absolutely no one—who wasn't a part of the team could step foot onto those fields.

Once again, I'd have to be patient. At least it was only for a few weeks.

Oddly enough, I wasn't nervous about starting the school year. I wasn't worried about the academic side of succeeding at Notre Dame whatsoever. Once I got over the hurdle of being accepted, it just felt natural. Like one more step on the path. I had confidence in my ability to take notes and study and pass tests. That allowed all of my focus to go into thinking about football and gearing myself up to go out there and finally get on that field. To be a part of the Fighting Irish. To be a part of the greatest football tradition there was. I knew I wouldn't be a starter. Didn't matter. I was excited just to be a part of that team, whatever part I could play.

Amazingly, while I focused on that dream, the housing situation took care of itself.

For insurance and safety purposes, the ACC always had to have a security guard/maintenance guy in the building. Even at night, when it was all closed up. The school's solution for that was to hire a student to live in the ACC. As luck would have it, the student who held the job that summer had just graduated in May, and when he vacated the position just before the start of that fall semester, they gave the job to me! Joe Sassano, the head of the ACC whom I'd gotten to know the summer before through the hockey camp, set me up with that job, and Rudy, the old janitor, contributed too. One thing leads to another in life. One step at a time. Every time. And building those relationships with people on campus made all the difference in the world.